What is “noir” as a literary, rather than a cinematic, genre? Brooklyn-based publisher Akashic’s Noir Series — each title of which brings together 16 writers from a select city, the latest one being their first Canadian foray, Toronto Noir — answers this question in a roundabout way. Crime fiction, in which cinematic noir finds its essential origins, is only a small part of Akashic’s noir vision. More important, it seems, is asking a group of respected, and largely young, writers to explore a city’s sundry underbellies with the aid of their own, distinctive voices.

“Unlike in crime fiction where the protagonist is generally a detective, in noir it’s generally a victim,” suggests Janine Armin, co-editor with Nathaniel G. Moore (both pictured above). “It is someone who is closely related to the crime and completely inextricable from that crime. There isn’t a resolution necessarily, or a solution. That’s not what drives the plot. What drives it is the grit and the grime of the city.”

There are two representatives of traditional crime fiction, Peter Robinson and Gail Bowen, the former of whom offers the closest the collection comes to a whodunnit. Pasha Malla’s story, “Filmsong,” set in Little India and about Bollywood, echoes Ernest Hemingway’s “The Killers,” and is one of the collection’s many film-related stories. (Bowen, RM Vaughan and Kim Moritsugu all provide renderings of Toronto as Hollywood North.) Then there’s Sean Dixon’s “Sic Transit Gloria at the Humber Loop,” which uses hard-boiled, Chandlerian first-person narration.

“Canadian literature right now has a huge noirish quality to it already,” says Armin. “It’s this unspoken intensity and tension which is all part and parcel of the noir genre. So I think that it’s a really good time for this collection to come out.”

For Armin, Toronto is an ideal setting for noir, despite what some crime lit bloggers are saying (Kevin Burton Smith of The Thrilling Detective wishes Montreal or “even fucking Moose Jaw” had been Akashic’s first Canadian city). “Growing up here I always thought I lived in a noir city.”
True to the Akashic formula, Toronto Noir begins with a map of the city, with the settings of the stories identified by Anatomy of a Murder–style corpse silhouettes. It’s an ambitious and judicious handling of the city’s geography, though one wonders why certain areas — Church Street and Jane-Finch for instance — which seem shoo-ins, weren’t included.

“It just depended on which neighbourhoods the authors chose,” says Armin, “and it worked out pretty evenly. I wish that there were more neighbourhoods, more authors; it could bode well for a second edition. It’s so hard when you’re limited to a small size and you’ve got such a big city and so many authors.” When there are eight million stories in the naked city, I suppose you’ve got to draw the line somewhere.